Imagine a winter night in northern Delaware, no wind, just quiet, with the snow-covered land sparkling in the glow from the stars. The temperature is in the teens—cold for the mid-Atlantic, but not unusual. Six young people are climbing a hill, a steep, open slope, struggling upward and sliding halfway down, laughing, helping each other up but also grabbing at coats to pull back those in front. Me, my three best girlfriends, and a couple of boys. We were 17.

I breathed in the cold, exhilarated, filled with a sense of wanting to be exactly where I was, brought alive by the snow, and the company, and the feel of belonging. I vowed I would always live somewhere with real winter. Cold was part of me. I was part of it.

Which is why, six years later, I was so utterly stunned to find myself huddled miserably beneath blankets in my bedroom in Oregon, unable to get warm. Outside, the rains of the Pacific Northwest fell and fell. I had four quilts piled atop me, thick socks on my feet and my freezing hands between my knees. A fire sputtered in the living room wood stove, which I couldn’t get to draw.

It was 45 degrees.

I’d worked hard to get a job in the Northwest, land of wilderness and rain forest. Oregon was paradise—unless for some odd reason, maybe a misalignment of energies, you happened not to belong there. Which seemed to be the case with me. The mountains, so grand and gorgeous in sun, became imposing and impenetrable in fog and rain. Watching the blue Pacific surf crash against rocks made me lonely. It wasn’t just my body that was cold in Oregon. It was my spirit.

Fast forward through another half dozen years and carry me back across the continent, to a beach that curls far out into the Atlantic. I’m walking face into the March wind, bundled up tight and laughing with joy. My only companions are the sleek seabirds called gannets that hurl themselves into the sea like flung knives. The ocean is dark blue and stormy; the waves rise up and collapse. And for reasons I can’t begin to describe, I feel like I’ve found the one place I belong.

We stayed on the Outer Banks for more than 30 years, and I always woke ecstatic to be there. On gale-filled nights when the temperatures would dip into the 30s—ah, but the wind and damp made it seem so much colder!—I’d sit by the wood stove, warm and happy, and listen to the pines creak overhead.

It wasn’t until very late in my time there that something hit me: The same humid, penetrating cold that had so defeated me in Oregon brought me alive on the Outer Banks. How could that be?

We are so much more than our physical bodies. Our landscapes, the places through which we move, the terrain we traverse and the skies above us shape us in ways that aboriginal peoples knew very well, but that are given scant thought in our culture. For whatever reason, the ingredients that make up who I am clashed with the landscape of Oregon. When I reached the Outer Banks, though, I knew very quickly I belonged there.

But through the decades things changed. The once-tiny island towns were discovered. The modest cottages on the ocean were torn down and replaced with mansions. Driving past rows of closed-up rental properties one winter day, I had the sudden feeling that I’d stepped into an apocalypse: lots of pretty houses, no people. And in a community where folks had always cared for each other and helped their neighbors, the newly poor were sleeping in cardboard boxes in the woods.

As I looked at all those huge, empty houses with their darkened windows, I felt the first tendrils of cold creep around my heart.

Another leap in time, and now we’ve reached a January night just last year, on the midcoast of Maine. A community concert has ended; people spill out of the barn, carried into the cold by the fine music we’ve heard. Snow crunches underfoot. I tip back my head and marvel at the star-strewn sky. I embrace the frigid air. And for the first time in many decades, I feel the way I felt on that midwinter night in Delaware.

Could this wintry place become home? Could I learn to love it as I loved the Outer Banks?

As I write this, I sit in a cozy room in a house built in 1804, or thereabouts. Sunlight bounces through the window, reflected from the snow in the yard. I’m cold, yes, but it’s the kind that can be remedied with down comforters and wool socks. It radiates from outside, not from within.

Most of the time we’re cozy and content here in Maine. We walk the wooded trails outside our door (in boots or crampons or even snowshoes, depending what’s on the ground), taking in the unfamiliar trees and the rise and fall of the land, wanting to learn everything we can about this new place. Once in a while, though, we sit paralyzed in our little house, hiding beneath blankets, not quite knowing how to make a life here. The bad days come no more than once a week, but they do come. This is not an easy path we’ve chosen.

We have bet our happiness that the flame kindled within us by the landscape and people of the Outer Banks will carry us through as we find our footing here. On nights when the snow swirls and the frigid wind blows, we feel a deep glow that lingers from all we’ve left behind, and it sustains us.

This first post from our new home in Maine is written with deep thanks to all those I love on the Outer Banks.

Apologies for not posting a new blog entry in January. Things got a little crazy during our move north.

On the windowsill by my desk, lying lightly between a prism and a small china bowl, are two black-and-white feathers that to me symbolize courage. It’s crazy how they came to be there—crazy because their significance grew from a personal superstition. They were dropped in our yard by a pileated woodpecker, a grand, lovely bird with a huge bill and a bright red crest. Twenty years ago I was living quite happily in this house, on an island tucked in piney woods, with Jeff and our young son. My life was exactly as I wanted it. I loved my work, my family, and our home on the Outer Banks. And then, out of the blue, Jeff asked me if I’d be willing to move. There was a job that interested him in another state. I began waking each morning with a sense of dread. Would this be our last season in this home? Would I ever again find the same sweet sense of community? One day I noticed a pileated woodpecker haunting our yard. “Go away!” I hissed. But it stayed around, lurking among the trees like the spirit of change. Who can say what small seeds might harbor the genesis of our fears, or why? I’d always loved pileated woodpeckers. Before then I’d considered spotting one to be akin to a glimpse of God. Instead I started looking quickly away whenever I saw one or heard its hammering. If I don’t look at it, I thought, it can’t affect me. As it turned out, Jeff didn’t get the job, and we stayed put all these years. Every time I came home from a trip away, I heaved a deeply contented sigh. But there were costs to my decision to keep change at arm’s length. Later in his career Jeff’s sense of purpose began to falter—and I couldn’t help wondering if my reticence to relocate had held him back. What good things might have happened if I’d been willing to accompany him on a new adventure? All this came swimming up to the surface a couple of years ago when I found these two black-and-white feathers lying near the back steps. I picked them up and scanned the trees. The woodpecker who’d dropped them was nowhere in sight. I brushed them against my cheeks and took them inside. It was time—past time—for me to open to the possibility of change. Ever since, those feathers have lain on the windowsill or the edge of my desk. Occasionally I’d eye them with a sense of trepidation. Other days I’d pick them up and stroke them, daring them to unleash their power. Eight months ago I noticed they’d disappeared. I spotted them under my desk and brought them back into the light. And change found me. Our quiet home is now a jumble of packing boxes and possessions in various stages of being sorted. In a few short days, we will load everything into a truck bound for a small village in coastal Maine. It was not supposed to happen now. Who moves to Maine in the dead of winter? But a young couple we love want to buy our house. If we turn it over to them, they’ll infuse it with a new energy. Why not? So we told them that if they could sell their house (in the middle of a swamp, five miles down a road that floods) we’d sell them ours. We figured it would take them months. They sold it in three days. As we’ve started packing, I’ve come to realize how strongly I’ve fused with the spirit of this house. I know exactly how the sunlight will play across the living room floor in every season. I gaze out my study window into trees that during my time here have doubled in girth. How will I ever be able to close the door and walk away? Several times a week Jeff and I look at each other and ask, “What in God’s name are we doing?” But I know that if I give up this chance in favor of my steady, settled life here, in a few years I’ll be disappointed, maybe even ashamed of myself. All arrows are pointing us to Maine. We have good friends there. We love the culture and the change of seasons. A place for us to stay has become available—almost magically, it seems—and we’ve found a lovely little piece of land to buy, in a community where there’s very little affordable property for sale. How can we not go? So even as my emotions seesaw from excitement to sorrow, I sort through the possessions in another closet and pack another few boxes. I know I’ll have some bad moments. Last week I talked with a friend who moved to another state to be with a new love, only to have the relationship fall apart after five weeks. “All the right doors had opened,” he said. “It was like life was telling me I needed to follow that path.” Broken-hearted, he returned to his old town and spent months sleeping on friends’ couches. As he spoke, I could feel my heart rate rise. “That won’t be my story,” my mind screamed. “Everything’s going to be great for us.” But honestly, there’s no way to know. All I can do is take a chance and go. If misfortune comes crashing down—well, at least I won’t be living in a rut. And my friend’s story seems to be edging toward a happy ending. Feeling sorry for him, his ex-wife cooked him a few meals. They began spending time together, and appreciating what they’d first loved about each other. Who knows where it might lead? So each morning I go out to the yard, to a beloved grove of trees, and meditate one more time. I try to push aside my vast to-do list in favor of stillness. When peace has settled on me, I go inside to sort through books and ready another carload of clothes or unwanted trinkets for the local thrift store. I brush the woodpecker feathers lightly against my lips. And I think of where I will carefully pack them to carry with me, away from the wide beaches of the Outer Banks and into the snowy north.

I wrote this a few weeks ago, and we are on our way to Maine. Wishing you all peace and new adventures during this holiday season and the coming year.

Quick: In the next 30 seconds, think of all the hats you wear, and the roles you play—parent, child, breadwinner, friend, peacemaker, strong one—and perhaps even write them all down.

Now look over the list and think about which roles you could comfortably step away from. How many of them would you be reluctant to give up? How many cause you to feel overwhelmed?

This is not at all a novel exercise, but it is enlightening. I’ve tried to keep it in mind over the past decade, ever since I encountered it in a book our wonderful adult Sunday school class was reading: Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Tolle writes about the social roles we take on and how tightly they constrict us, if we let them. Like it or not, our social standing largely determines how we move through the world, and how others orbit around us. “The way in which you speak to the chairman of the company might be different in subtle ways from how you speak to the janitor,” he writes. True, and I’m ashamed to admit it. Watch carefully, he says, and you will detect this kind of performance first in others and then in yourself. It can be a formidable barrier to loving kindness.

But how do you not play a role? As soon as you try to be “just yourself,” Tolle notes, your mind creates a role for you, perhaps something like “wise one.” The only way to step completely out of role-playing is to admit you don’t know who you are. “If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what’s left is who you are—the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.”

“Give up defining yourself—to yourself and others,” he counsels. “You won’t die. You will come to life.”

I liked the idea of losing myself, of shedding my social standing like snake skin. I tried it and found that by not defining myself by vocation or any other label, I remained more open to the people I met each day, regardless of whether I knew them. It was remarkably freeing to step away from long-held constraints, such as being the family member who always bakes the traditional Christmas cookies. I hadn’t realized how much of the drudgery of my life was self-imposed. I was having fun with the whole concept—until our son was killed and the role of mother was taken from me.

Losing Reid robbed me of a key part of my identity (and my heart). But it also gave me a choice. I could wrap myself tightly in the cloak of the brokenhearted and no one would blame me. Or I could refuse that role. What if I chose something else? What new identity might I take on? When I stumbled across the idea that I might be able to again find meaning in life by learning to help people in need or trouble, I grabbed it and held on. And yes, bit by bit it has helped bring the light back.

The challenge now is for me to step into new situations without letting myself be pigeon-holed as someone who believes or acts or must be treated a certain way. I need to also avoid pigeon-holing myself. To keep my role as grieving mother from ruling my life, I had to take a firm step away from it.

Over time I’ve found myself working to discard another role: that of the knowing one. This one is especially difficult to shrug off when I’m trying to help someone else. As the perceived helper or rescuer, it’s assumed (sometimes by the other person, sometimes by myself) that I hold the knowledge to improve the person’s situation. But that’s dead wrong. The only way to make lasting change in someone’s life is to work with him to help him find ways to reach his goals. I hold no magic key.

When I make kindness and openness my prevailing sentiment, it lets me ignore the incessant voice of my ego if, for instance, it tells me that I know more than the person I’m with. Possibly I do. But as someone who is trying to give up myself in order to give of myself, I should assume that I do not. An essential part of the journey is letting go of my own lust to control things. I should allow people the space and freedom to become powerful in their own ways.

How comfortable am I, living with no prescribed role? Not at all, most days. How can I become more comfortable? I suspect it’s by gradually peeling away the layers of my artificial identity and, as I realize I’ve taken on yet more roles, being willing to let them go.

In the Shamanistic practices of Peru, there is a prayer that asks Sachamama, the Great Serpent, to help us learn to shed our pasts the way she sheds her skin. This is one of the points where aboriginal practices, Christian beliefs, and Eastern philosophies converge. Jesus asks us to be humble and to nurture the deepest compassion we possibly can. What better way to become “the Being behind the human” than to step away from the roles heaped on us since birth?

The children were beautiful—eyes shining, hair combed, clean white shirts and gray school uniforms. It was clear that their parents and neighbors wanted them to do well in their classes, here in this simple concrete school deep in the Peruvian Amazon.

It might not have been that way, except for the persistence of an American teacher and a cadre of volunteers who offered the children some simple gifts, over and over, until their lives were changed.

Who knew such items could make a difference? I didn’t—not, at least, on so grand a scale. And in seeing what’s possible through a small but significant act, offered consistently through the years, I’ve realized anew what I too often forget: It’s the simple acts of kindness that have the most power to change lives.

I wish I could remember that. I wish it was always my first thought--selfless service can be really, really simple--rather than assuming it takes grandiose ideas and expensive programs to make this world a better place.

This program began when an American science teacher went to the Peruvian Amazon on vacation, fell in love with its landscape and people, and decided to stay. Pamela Bucur de Arevalo soon found herself on the board of directors for CONAPAC, a nonprofit organization formed by the tour company Explorama Lodges to help protect uncut tracks of jungle.

CONAPAC’s founders believed that if the residents of remote villages along the river were well educated, they’d make better decisions about preserving their natural resources. So in 1993, under Bucur’s leadership, they initiated the Adopt-A-School program, through which volunteers deliver to jungle children the simple tools they need to learn.

It doesn’t sound like much. But while public education is free in Peru, parents must pay for all their children’s supplies. The cost was more than many families could afford. As a result, large numbers of school-age children were not attending classes.

Bucur negotiated an agreement with 10 jungle schools: Volunteers would bring supplies to the villages for the children to use in their classes if the village leaders would agree to preserve the acres of forest over which they held dominion. The forest tracts would be held intact, rather than being cut by lumber companies.

Pam Bucur and an Adopt-A-School family

Thinking back, I remember how excited I would become every August when my mom would take me to buy my school supplies. The evening before school opened, I’d arrange everything in a neat pile, ready to go. Having a few nice things to take to class helped make me an eager student.

The same thing, it turns out, is true of jungle children. Bucur’s brainchild grew, and grew, until today the Adopt-A-School program directly helps more than 3,000 students in 54 communities and 108 schools. It also offers teacher trainings and enrichment programs. Each April volunteers from many different countries travel to the jungle to help organize and distribute supplies. They meet students, hand-delivering pretty, wrapped packages to every one. They’re greeted in each village with a celebration that includes dance presentations, songs, and heartfelt thanks. Many volunteers have described their participation in the program as life-changing.

CONAPAC provides other services too. It operates a heavily used jungle library, one of the region’s few sources of books. And it runs a highly effective program that has brought clean drinking water to remote jungle communities through the construction of simple, ingenious water treatment plants.

It is here that I must stop and issue a mea culpa. I visited some of CONAPAC’s partner communities in 2008 and again in 2012. Both times I was more interested in learning about the organization’s efforts to build water plants than its Adopt-A-School programs. Giving children and their parents access to drinking water with no pollutants or parasites: Surely that was more important than simply distributing school supplies. Wasn’t it?

But recently I heard my friend Nancy Cowal describe her experience last spring with Adopt-A-School. Nancy has volunteered with CONAPAC for several decades. Each spring she travels to Iquitos to help Pam Bucur and other staff members with the mammoth task of organizing school supplies and volunteer schedules for distribution week.

This past spring, Nancy told me, during a trip to a community that’s participated in Adopt-A-School since the beginning, a village leader gave a speech that showed how deeply effective the program has been. He, too, had participated in Adopt-A-School as a child. He said the program’s emphasis on the importance of education had been a key reason he had learned achieved enough to become a leader of the settlement. In another community, a mother presented an Adopt-A-School donor with a painting done by her son, who’d gone on to study art at a college in Iquitos. She said CONAPAC’s influence and the donor’s generosity had made it possible for her son to succeed.

In those villages and others the message was the same: We would not be who we are without Adopt-A-School. You helped show us that our children deserve to be educated. You have changed our lives for the better in so many ways.

Nancy’s words made me see how wrong I’d been to weigh the importance of one service project over another. And she made me realize anew: It’s not just the big, sexy service programs that make a difference.

Regardless of whether they’re simple or grand, I can never know exactly how effective my efforts will be in helping others. I just know I need to offer help, over and over, in whatever form I can.

You can learn more about CONAPAC’s efforts to help jungle communities and preserve uncut forest at www.conapac.org

Note: This post was originally published Sept. 13, 2017, on the website Tiny Buddha, and you can find that version here.

Over breakfast one morning recently, Jeff and I started reminiscing about past years, and something was said that brought back a painful memory for me. My boss at the time had been unimaginably small-minded. He had hung me out to dry. “I still can’t understand why he did that,” I said.

Jeff looked at me levelly. “You need to get over it, Jan,” he said. “It was years ago.”

Wise advice, without question. The only problem was that I didn’t want it just then.

Why is it that we are so seldom allowed a few moments just to hurt? After a serious heartbreak like the death of a loved one, sure, we’re given all the leeway we need. But the run-of-the-mill slights and small, persistent sorrows are treated as something we should quickly move past, even when they’re deeply painful. Jeff, poor guy, was just trying to help. I couldn’t fault him. I knew I was being a bit ridiculous. But what I longed for was someone to acknowledge my outrage, let me sit with it, live into it for a few moments—and then gently remind me that it’s time to get over it.

A few hours later, after I’d licked my wounds and was feeling better, I began to wonder: Might I also be failing to honor the sorrows of others?

Everything I’ve learned in the past eight years, since the death of our son, has pointed me to the same lesson: The most important thing we can give each other in times of pain is compassion, a simple, “Oh, I bet that’s really hard.” We should offer that before—or instead of—advice on how to cope.

Even worse are the times when we immediately turn the conversation to ourselves: “I know just what you mean. I’m going through something like that too.” I catch myself doing this way too often. My intent is to signal to the person that we’re partners in pain and can support each other. But the comment shifts the focus away from my companion’s heartache to mine.

Or we may inadvertently belittle our friend’s sorrow with stories of how we’ve overcome the same challenge. Recently I overheard a conversation between two elderly women. One was talking about how emotionally wrenching she was finding it to give up her home and move to a retirement facility. “Oh, you won’t miss it a bit once you get settled,” the other woman said. She had already been through the experience and knew without question what lay ahead. I wanted to break in and hug the first woman. When we are in pain, the last thing we need is someone who knows without question what lies ahead.

Many of us find it deeply uncomfortable to be in the presence of suffering. And no wonder. We live in a culture where we’re taught from childhood to hide our hurts, to buck up and get over them. We don’t want to display them, and we don’t want to see them in others. Yet unspoken pain is all around us.

I’m talking here about a way of caring for each other that hews a fine line, because I in no way want to encourage my friends and loved ones to wallow in their sorrow. I want to honor it for what it is but never give it the power to rule my life. It’s true that others may be able to benefit from what I’ve learned—but not immediately after suffering the same kind of hurt. And it’s entirely up to them whether or not they want to learn from me.

To show love for another in sorrow asks more of us than empathetic gestures. It asks us to try and understand exactly what the other is feeling, and even to risk getting a taste of that pain.

At a retreat in Maui in 2001, Ram Dass drew a clear distinction between empathy and compassion. “Compassion for somebody else is that you are one with them and you hurt with them. That compassion comes out of the oneness of your heart, the oneness with all beings . . . ” He continued, “It’s not just empathy. It’s not one person feels empathy for another person. It’s got to be one person.”

How will I ever reach the point where I can feel as one with someone who’s hurting? In this I’m like a child learning to walk; I can only stumble and try again. I’ve lived most of my life cultivating the image of myself as a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need anyone’s help. Reid’s death showed me how wrong I was. My task now, I think, is to be present for others who are hurting, because I know what suffering means. This knowledge is a bittersweet gift that’s been given to me by life. I’m trying as hard as I can to use it.

I do not always succeed.

This is what I know for certain: I can’t tell others how to heal. All I can do is sit with them—and when they’re ready, help them light a candle to find their way out of the dark. Doing this kindly, without giving voice to how I think they should move forward, is a practice I will struggle to follow the rest of my life.

One last thing: A few weeks ago, when I had another setback with work, my dear Jeff came to me and enveloped me in a hug. He held me close, hurting with me. And only then, after several minutes, did he remind me that it wasn’t all that important—that in fact I had plenty of reasons to let it go.

I responded by giving him the biggest, longest kiss I’ve given him in years.